The Art and Craft of Comparison

John Boswell is Associate Professor in Politics at the University of Southampton. He is the author of The Real War on Obesity (2016). Jack Corbett is Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton. He has authored or edited of five books and more than fifty articles and book chapters. He holds honorary appointments at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, the Australian National University, and the Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University, Australia. R. A. W. Rhodes is Professor of Government (Research) at the University of Southampton. He has authored or edited forty books and two hundred articles and book chapters, including Network Governance and the Differentiated Polity: Selected Essays, Volume I (2017); and Interpretive Political Science: Selected Essays, Volume II (2017). He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Britain.

• 1. Comparative intuition ; 2. Interpretation; 3. Dilemmas; 4. Design; 5. Fieldwork; 6. Analysis; 7. The craft of writing; 8. Retrospective; References; Indices.

'Against those who would seek to either constrict or suppress the comparative intuition, Boswell, Corbett, and Rhodes make a brilliant case for an open and artful use of comparison in the social sciences. Comparing, they show, can be a creative act in which discovery, plausible conjecture, and unlikely juxtaposition figure prominently. A mind-opening perspective, colorfully presented, from which all social scientists can learn.' Frederic Schaffer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst